Generative AI: Ex-Mozillians Raise $3.3M for Coqui, Generative AI Speech Synthesis for All Creatives
What Coqui Does
Coqui enables creatives to quickly and easily create, cast, and direct AI voice actors without all the hassle. Create custom voices from a prompt, e.g. “Old man who smokes 2 packs a day”; cast out-of-the-box and custom voices in your projects; and direct every nuance of their performance.
Coqui’s Origin
The company was founded in 2021 by Eren Gölge, Josh Meyer, Kelly Davis, and Reuben Morais, the founders of Mozilla’s machine learning group. At Mozilla they spent years working on speech technology, but found traditional approaches to creating and controlling voices at best lacking and at worst non-existent.
“We started Coqui because using traditional approaches we were spending months gathering custom voice data, weeks training custom voice models, and still found it impossible to direct every nuance of a voice’s performance. It was frustrating! There had to be a better way.”, said co-founder and CEO Kelly Davis. “Later, we realized that everyone had the same problem! So, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work on a solution.”
Coqui for Creatives
For creatives voice is a double edged sword. With the slightest shift in tone, it can paint the most detailed picture of our inner lives; however, it’s a nightmare to work with. Casting, recording, directing, scheduling, booking a studio, and doing it all again in post-production. Creatives crave a simple solution, and Coqui scratches that itch.
Coqui provides high-quality, out-of-the box AI voices; quick voice cloning; prompt-to-voice; and the ability to direct every nuance of a voice’s performance. It’s a single place for casting, recording, directing, and scheduling. Everything, all at your fingertips and all at the time and place of your choosing.
“After chatting to tons of creatives working on video games, audio post-production, dubbing, and lots of other disciplines, we know that the standard mantra of casting, recording, directing, scheduling… is slowing development and costing time and money. Voice needs to be dragged into the 21st century, and generative AI is doing it.” says Kelly Davis Co-Founder and CEO of Coqui and previous Head of Mozilla’s Machine Learning Group.
The funding will be used to grow the sales and development teams and to accelerate growth in the US market.
Creativity Re-Created
The generative AI revolution is afoot and it’s fundamentally changing creatives’ world. No medium will be left untouched, from text, to graphics, video, and voice. The revolution is everywhere, and it’s a amassive opportunity to lower production costs, accelerate development, and simply iterate faster. Coqui is bringing this revolution to voice. With high-quality, out-of-the box AI voices; quick voice cloning; prompt-to-voice; and the ability to direct every nuance of a voice’s performance, Coqui is your on-ramp to voice’s generative revolution.